A War On Black Women
Yesterday I checked out Essence.com to peep an article which help inspire my blog today
our voice is the most important and powerful thing we have. Not only a voice to talk about what’s wrong, but who we are as Black women. The images that are portrayed of us are so limited and don’t show the breadth of who we are. – Terri Vaughn
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Take a look in the mirror, then think of your favorite movie, or television show. Now ask yourself when was the last time you seen someone who looked or acted like you do? Is there a war on Black women? One of my readers posed a question “why is it that anytime black people are portrayed on TV we’re either ‘afro centric’ ‘ghetto or loud mouthed? Or they pick black women w/ European features? I just don’t understand why there can’t be more ‘regular’ everyday looking black women.” I say yes there is a war on Black women and it’s a civil war a cold war combined.
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Use yourself for example, you don’t like the light skinned girl because her hair is long, you don’t like the dark skinned girl because she doesn’t have a perm or you just don’t like that “Bitch” cause of the way she looked at you last week at the copy machine.
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We tend to blame the media, for all of the images of Black women we see on television and movies, yet we all know someone who acts just like that but that person is never ourselves. It’s Aunt Malikah, Cousin Diamonique, or Ashley our high yellow bourgeois cousin from the good side of town.
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Sure the media doesn’t depict the average black woman who works in an office as a secretary and whose idea of a “nice date” is going to Olive Garden or Red Lobster. Instead they prey on those random moments when the ghetto comes out of us. Or they play up our connection with our roots and have her burning inscents, smoking cloves and humming Negro spirituals while walking to a poetry jam.
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The truth is Black woman are a bit ghetto, bourgeois and at times can get so loud it’s embarrassing. Yet at most other times the Black woman is the queen the black man knows and loves. The one who washes his dirty boxers, cooks him dinner, and will put him in his place when he gets out of line. Because with all that she does, she deserves not to have to take any crap from him. She will love and support him, on one condition, that he loves and support her.
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At times when she is single she is going to go out and have a few drinks and she might get loud. And she will continue to go to the mall to purchase high priced shoes, and she might cause a scene if the salesperson is treating her any different from a white patron of the boutique. Hell she worked twice as hard for her money and last time she checked all money is green and she’ll be damned if she lets anybody short her in the few areas of her life that she has control over.
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Even with all of the hurdles life has placed in front of her, all she asks for is a true depiction of her on the television screen. So stand up black woman, and flaunt your sophistication, and class. Celebrate your sexy, and let them know sometimes you might want to show off your ass. You are a Black woman, descendant of Kings & Queen, the resurrection of Nefertiti and the mother of the Earth.
